


Pawns and Kings

by Meltha



Category: Arthurian Mythology
Genre: F/M, Yuletide 2008
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-11-07
Updated: 2011-11-07
Packaged: 2017-10-25 19:01:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,334
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/273679
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Meltha/pseuds/Meltha
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mordred muses on his role in the great tragedy of the court, but the question remains whose tragedy it is.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Pawns and Kings

**Author's Note:**

  * For [zorrie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/zorrie/gifts).



> Written for Zorrie for Yultide 2008

When you are born already damned, you do not get many choices other than to become the villain. I am a bastard, in every sense of the word, and if that is to be my role, then I might as well embrace it whole-heartedly. I never do things by halves. That, at least, history and the bards and poets and chroniclers and whoever else decides to stick their noses into this mess of a lineage will have to agree upon. I am not a boring fellow, but then, with such very interesting parents I don’t see how I could have been anything else but interesting.

Mummy, dearest darling that she was, was not the model of domestic perfection that motherhood supposedly embodies. No, her interests ran more along the lines of cauldrons simmering with the cast off bits and ends of animals that were atrociously ugly even when they were alive. But she was quite a powerful witch. She played with fate, tossing it from hand to hand like a ball, or perhaps an apple if I want to keep the metaphor of temptress going. Fate, however, does not appreciate being the toy of a woman who, though really quite intelligent, had absolutely no foresight whatsoever, and it burned her badly in the end. She’s quite dead now. Yes, I know, she’s supposedly ensconced in Avalon of the Apple Trees, shrouded in mist and waiting to welcome home her dear brother at the moment of his death like some foggy angel. Perhaps it’s a fair image. There are, of course, many kinds of angels, and not all of them have the best intentions of humanity at heart. She would be of that ilk.

So, as a tot, I was informed of three simple facts at Mother’s knee. The first was that Arthur, King of Britain, was an abomination that needed to be smote into the ground. He was the dark boogie man who waited in the shadows to gobble up little boys, and I think I had some notion that he was actually King Herod. Loathing is extremely easy when learned young, and I was a most apt pupil. Granted, at a later date I found that her picture of Arthur was somewhat warped, but then so was she, so perhaps she wasn’t to blame for it.

The second fact was that this horrid, terrifying creature was both my father and my half-uncle. Besides creating a truly befuddling concept of my family tree, which loops back on itself like a particularly deranged grapevine, this also meant that half of me was created of what I most hated. I was half-monster. Now, this might be difficult for an outsider to understand, but I really found this quite liberating. If I was a bad, naughty little boy, well, it was the fault of my bad, wicked father. No one could expect less of me than to be the very image of the horrific act that created me. Had I turned out to be less than I am, it would have smacked of disappointment. I was, however, cautioned by Mother never to mention my parentage to another soul as it would perhaps engender mobs intent upon cleansing the land of my polluted existence by tearing me into pieces. As this did not sound like a pleasant experience, I learned to hold my tongue.

Ah, but the third fact was a lovely one. You see, I was raised to know I had a purpose. It’s a wonderful thing to have a purpose; it’s a map to the future, with every step delineated and ready to be taken. Granted, it was not a purpose I had chosen, but rather one that I was compelled to accept. All that pesky free will dissolved into the ether as soon as Mother told me that the whole point of my existence was to destroy my father, bit by exquisite bit, until the hollow, empty shell that remained was blown away by the wind like a milk pod. Nothing as crude as outright murder would suffice. No, it had to be slowly brought to a boil, like one of her potions inexorably beginning to simmer over the flames, and as the vapors wafted upward, so would his precious moralities and friendships and loyalties.

It’s possible she may have loved him once. Well, obviously she loved him at least once in the most concrete sense, but I mean that her heart may actually have opened to him a bit. I doubt she knew she was laying with her half-brother, after all. She had been a pawn in other people’s games more than once, and she hadn’t seen him since he was little more than two years old. No one ever wonders if Jocasta ever really loved Oedipus, after all, since the story is all about him and his great trials as the king. But there was enough bitterness and gall in the lessons she taught me to make me believe that she must have been hurt very badly to be so very, very set upon his utter destruction. I have engendered that feeling in a few women myself, and I do know the symptoms. Nothing in this world is more dangerous than love. It is why I avoid it at all costs.

It was pretty to use that very weapon, love, against Arthur. Oh, not Guinevere. Never her. He loved her in his own little way, of course, and I will admit she is an extremely beautiful woman. Granted, when most of the ladies of the court are plagued with smallpox scars and missing teeth almost any woman who has had the immense luck of fine health can be considered a great beauty, but the queen was really quite amazingly beautiful. That is the second most dangerous thing in the world, of course: a beautiful woman. Or a beautiful man, for that matter, and Lancelot du Lac most certainly fell into that category as well. It was inevitable that they would be attracted to one another, but what I wasn’t prepared for was Arthur’s reaction of subdued, hurt jealousy. Anyone could have predicted that it would arise, but not that it would be over Lancelot instead of his wife.

Arthur wanted to be Lancelot. He saw him as perfect, and he nearly was so, annoying as that was. Best knight, bravest knight, sat a horse better than any other man alive, and to top it off eyes as blue as cornflowers, rich as many a king in other lands, and utterly unattached to anyone until that unfortunate affair with the Lily Maid. He was free, something Arthur had never been, and of course I sympathized with that. Oh, I’m not entirely without pity for him. We are far too much alike for that, both roped into destinies that were decided long before our births. Sympathy, however, does not automatically engender pity. When I saw that the hurt in his eyes was following the height of French chivalry with a haunted expression, I was entirely pitiless.

Perhaps it was a favor to my father to expose their tryst. It was almost certainly a favor to the queen and her lover as they both appeared to be so full of melodramatic sentiment that they were in danger of spontaneous combustion from it. But it made the wheels move, and the vapors above the cauldron my mother had lit so long ago were now shimmering with heat. The round table shattered, the knights broke into camps not based upon right and wrong but upon whom they liked best, the queen became a nun of all things, and the two best friends, liege lord and extraordinary servant, were to slit one another’s throats.

I will not have that, however. You see, this has become personal in spite of what Mother wanted. No fratricide was to dampen my lance with blood, but I have other plans. I have found I am not so pitiless as I had once thought.


End file.
